Government

Co-mingled case study: Vale of White Horse District Council

After reviewing the separate sort vs. co-mingled debate, Annie Kane takes a look at a local authority that has chosen to undertake co-mingled collections, and the reasons for doing so

This article was taken from Issue 80

In 2008, Vale of White Horse and South Oxfordshire district councils jointly tendered for a fortnightly recycling service that could boost their respective recycling rates.

The bid that the councils ended up choosing was from Biffa, which suggested that the authorities move away from a weekly, unlimited residual waste collection with weekly collections of recycling boxes to an alternate weekly collection of residual waste (in a 180- litre wheelie bin) and co-mingled recycling (in a 240-litre wheelie bin – with the option to place excess recycling next to the bin) alongside weekly food waste collections.